Sunday, May 1, 2011

WASHINGTON: Al Qaeda's elusive leader Osama bin Laden is dead and his body has been recovered by US authorities, American media reported. US President
Barack Obama was to make the announcement shortly.

US President Barack Obama would make this announcement shortly, a senior US official said.

The official said that Bin Laden was dead, but did not provide details of how his death occurred.

Obama was imminently to address Americans in a highly unusual Sunday night appearance on television.

MOSCOW - Russia on May 1 called for an immediate cease-fire in Libya and said it had "serious doubts" the West was not targeting Moammar Gadhafi and his family after Tripoli said the leader's son was killed.

Damage is shown at a home belonging to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi during a government-organized tour of Tripoli on May 1. The Libyan government said Gadhafi’s youngest son was killed in a NATO airstrike. (Mahmud Turkia / Agence France-Presse)

"The claims of the coalition members that strikes over Libya do not have the physical destruction of Moammar Gadhafi and members of his family as their goal cause serious doubts," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"Reports of casualties among civilians are being received in Moscow with increasing concern," it added.
A NATO raid late April 30 killed Gadhafi's youngest son and three grandchildren, a Libyan government spokesman said .
The Libyan leader and his wife were in the building that came under attack but were not harmed, the spokesman said, calling the strike "a direct operation to assassinate the leader of this country."
NATO said it had targeted a command and control center.
The Russian foreign ministry said the coalition's strikes over Tripoli and other cities had intensified in recent days.
It reeled off a series of non-military installations including premises of Libyan non-government organizations that it said had come under fire.
The ministry said this proved that Russia was right when it had warned that the "disproportionate use of force" and the exceeding of the U.N. mandate would lead to "harmful consequences and deaths of innocent people."
It called on the coalition to "cease fire immediately" and "begin a political settlement without any preliminary conditions."
Russia last month abstained from the U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya, but later it accused the West of exceeding the U.N. mandate.
The U.N. resolution authorized the use of force in Libya to protect civilians from a bloody war sparked by a rebellion against Gadhafi's four decades of rule and his regime's efforts to suppress it.

TEHRAN, Iran - A top Iranian military officer on April 30 denounced what he called an "Arab dictatorial front" and claimed that the "Persian Gulf has belonged to Iran forever," media reports said.
"The Arab dictatorial regimes in the Persian Gulf are unable to contain the popular uprisings," Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the chief of staff of Iran's armed forces, was widely quoted as saying by Iranian media.

"Instead of trying and failing to open an unworkable front against Iran, these dictators should relinquish power, end their savage crimes and let the people determine their own future," Firouzabadi said.
He also denounced "plots" by the Gulf Arab petro-monarchies to "carve out an identity for themselves by rejecting the identity of others," referring to Iran.
"The Persian Gulf has always, is and shall always belong to Iran," the general said.
Firouzabadi, speaking on the annual "National Day of the Persian Gulf," also condemned regional Arab monarchies for refusing to call the waterway between Iran and its Arab neighbors by its "historical name."
"With the arrival of the British and later the Americans in the region, plots were hatched to try and change the name with fake identities ... to distort the history and identity of the Persian Gulf," Firouzabadi said.
Relations between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbors have deteriorated sharply, with the latter accusing Tehran of seeking to destabilize Arab regimes in favor of popular unrest that has erupted in many Arab countries.
Shiite-dominant Iran has strongly criticized Saudi Arabia's military intervention in Sunni-ruled Bahrain aimed to help crack down on a Shiite-led uprising there.
Iran says it gives "moral support" to Bahrainis but is not involved in the protests there.
Bahrain and Kuwait have in turn expelled Iranian diplomats, accusing them of espionage.
Iran has in the past claimed Bahrain as part of its territory, and it controls three islands in the southern Gulf that are also claimed by the United Arab Emirates.